On Mar 9, 2008, at 11:12 AM, Doug McNutt wrote:
Hashing of tools by shells has not been mentioned. It may not be
part of the problem but on invocation many, if not all, shells
examine the $PATH variable and make a table of executables that it
finds. The table is then converted to a hashed lookup array in
order to improve speed of response. (That probably makes little
sense today but it was started during the days of mag tape.)
So if you create a perl script, place it somewhere in $PATH, and
set its execute permission a running shell will not find it. A full
path, perhaps starting with the current directory " . " always works.
In tcsh the command to rework the hash of tools is "rehash".
Restarting the shell with a new Terminal.app window will do pretty
much the same thing.
It's not likely that Gary is having problems with his shell creating
a hash table of executables on startup; he's using bash (the default
in OS X these days), and bash doesn't do that:
test1.pl
-bash: test1.pl: command not found
If he had created test1.pl in a directory in his path (say, /Users/
gary/bin) but the executable bit wasn't set, he'd have gotten the error
-bash: /Users/gary/bin/test1.pl: Permission denied
even if the file was created after his bash shell started. If he
then had the executable bit set properly (chmod +x test1.pl) and
didn't have a perl installed at /usr/local/ActivePerl-5.10/bin/perl,
he'd have gotten the error
-bash: /Users/gary/bin/test1.pl: /usr/local/ActivePerl-5.10/bin/perl:
bad interpreter: No such file or directory
Of course, maybe he's eschewing the default perl on OS X because he
wants to use the 5.10 for some reason and he downloaded ActiveState's
build for OS X; if that's the case, then that's probably the shebang
line he wants.
Anyway, I'll shut up now, since people have just about beat this
subject to death. ;)
Here's hoping Gary's happily programming perl on his Mac now...
-packy
--
Packy Anderson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean;
And if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat.
We could both together go out on the ocean--
Me upon my pony on my boat.
